Homestar Saga

Chapter 14: Jumpdrive

The humming of the ship maintained its fever pitch. Yvian pulled up the ship's status on her console. All systems green, Jumpdrive engaged. She looked back at Mims. He continued to shift between nav console and ship status, cursing to himself.

"Uh, Mark?" Lissa looked up from her console. "We don't know where we are."

"We don't need to," Mims replied. "We just need to know where the Gate is, and the Jumpdrive takes care of the rest."

"No, Mark," Lissa sounded worried. "We need to know where the Gate is in relation to us. That's why we're not jumping."

"Oh." Mims stopped what he was doing. "Shit."

"What happens when you activate the drive with bad navigation data?"

"Same as if you use it with no data," the human shrugged. "It finds the nearest Gate and takes you there."

"Ok," Lissa listened to the humming for a moment. "How does it know where the nearest Gate is?"

"I have no idea."

"Damn it, Mark!" Lissa pulled something up on her console. "How can you not know that?"

"It's not in the manual," he said. "The Jumpdrive is proprietary technology. They don't tell anyone how it works."

Lissa cursed. "Do you have any guesses?"

"Not really," the human folded his arms. "I kill things for a living. I'm not an engineer."

"Guys," Yvian interrupted. "We have a new problem." She zoomed in on the sensors.

"What is it?" Mims came over and looked at her screen.

"I think powering the Jumpdrive brought us some unwanted attention." Yvian pointed at the sensor display. "The Klusters stopped spinning and broke up. We've got infected Fighters, Interceptors, and Raiders heading our way."

Mims cursed. Lissa asked, "How many?"

"Um..." Yvian stared at the screen, then gave up counting. "All of them? I think?"

Mims walked back to his station. "How soon will they get here?"

Yvian ran calculations through the console. "If they keep accelerating at their current rate, they'll be on us in six hours, twenty seven minutes."

The human nodded. "Then we've got six hours to figure this out, and twenty seven minutes to blow the ship if we don't."

"Blow the ship?" Yvian didn't like the sound of that.

"Those things can co-opt our tech. Probably replicate it, too." The human pulled up a weapons display. "If they take the ship, they get a Jumpdrive. We can't let that happen."

"Do we even have a way to do that?" Lissa asked. "Overloading the engine's a Holovision thing. Real ships have too many safety features to do that kind of crap."

"That's the easy part," Mims said. "We can just lower our shields and target ourselves with missiles. I'll make sure the heavy torpedo hits first. We won't even feel it."

"That's better than feeling it I guess," Yvian mused. "But I think I'd rather live."

"We could use the emergency shutoff," Lissa suggested. "If we shutdown the drive, we can use the engines. Buy a little time, maybe."

Mims considered. "I'm not sure that's a good idea. The Jumpdrive's the only way we're getting out of here. If it's trying to find us a place to go, I think we should give it as much time as we can."

Lissa checked the ship's status again. "I'm not sure how much time we can give it. We're putting pretty serious strain on power distribution."

"You think it might go critical?" Mims looked at his status screen again. "I thought you said it can't do that."